Jane Casey Scoops Mary Higgins Clark Award at the Edgars

Each spring, the Mystery Writers of America present theEdgar®Awards, named after Edgar Allan Poe and widely acknowledged to be the most prestigious awards in the genre, honouring the best inmystery fiction,non-fiction,television,film, andtheaterpublished or produced in the previous year. 2015 saw two Irish writers on the shortlists Stuart Neville forThe Final Silence(Best Novel) and Jane Casey forThe Stranger You Know.

Hearing the news at home in London, Jane is understandably delighted – she told Writing.ie, ‘I’m absolutely thrilled to be the winner of the 2015 Mary Higgins Clark award forThe Stranger You Know. Mary Higgins Clark is such a special writer – a trailblazer for women who write crime – and it’s a huge honour for me. I wasn’t expecting to win, not least because this year’s list of nominees included Sharon Bolton and a fantastic debut novel by Julia Dahl. I was nominated for this award in 2013 forThe Reckoningso it’s very nice to come back with another Maeve Kerrigan novel and win it! It’s particularly special to be recognised in the US where there’s such a tradition of great crime writing and there are so many talented authors, and I’m very pleased for my loyal, lovely US publishers at Minotaur. I’m not sure how Maeve Kerrigan would celebrate, but I have a bottle of champagne in the fridge!’